Elizabeth Midgley

Elizabeth Midgley died on July 19, 2023, in Washington, D.C., surrounded by her three children. She was 94. The cause was consequences of a fall at her home. Born in Philadelphia in 1929, Elizabeth Midgley graduated from high school in Madison where her father was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin. She graduated from Radcliffe College (Class of 1950). Her marriage to Thomas L. Farmer in 1951 ended in divorce in 1970. That year she married John Midgley, an editor and correspondent for The Economist, who died in 2000. In 2005 she married Sidney Weintraub, a former Foreign Service officer and professor of economics, who died in 2014. Elizabeth Midgley was a television journalist and a founding trustee of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She was a producer of the CBS Evening News from 1970-1988. Midgley was hired after the Federal Communications Commission included women in its equal employment rules for television broadcasters. Two years later, Midgley covered the scene of the pre-dawn break-in at the DNC Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972; she produced the two television news broadcasts on the story that evening. In his book, The Place to Be: Washington, CBS and the Glory Days of Television News, Roger Mudd describes how, with no taxis on the streets of Washington that early Saturday morning, Midgley took off running from the CBS bureau on M Street to the Watergate complex, almost 12 long city blocks, in her signature lace-up, Oxford shoes. Mudd comments, “She was not about to let this story get away.” A former colleague said, “Elizabeth Midgley was a jewel. She personified the best of CBS News and journalism.” Midgley started her career at the State Department in the Office of Intelligence Research. She worked in the 1960 Kennedy presidential campaign and the subsequent “talent hunt” that assembled the administration. She next worked for Walter Lippman as his subeditor and reporter. In 1968, she became the Washington correspondent of the Public Broadcasting Laboratory, a pilot project of the Ford Foundation. On retiring, she continued with the German Marshall Fund and co-authored a study on immigration policy. She is survived by three children: Daniel, Sarah and Elspeth, and five grandchildren. A memorial service is planned for Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 11:00 a.m. at St. Albans Episcopal Church at 3001 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C.